Modern portable consumer and industrial electronics provide increasing levels of functionality to support modern life including location-based information services. This is especially true for client devices such as navigation systems, cellular phones, portable digital assistants, and multifunction devices.
As users adopt mobile location-based service devices, new and old usage begin to take advantage of this new device space. There are many solutions to take advantage of this new device opportunity. One existing approach is to use location information to provide navigation services, such as a global positioning service (GPS) navigation system for a mobile device.
Navigation system and service providers are continually making improvement in the user's experience in order to be competitive. In navigation services, demand for better route planning is increasingly important.
Thus, a need still remains for a navigation system with a route planning mechanism for providing a user-friendly experience and efficiency. In view of ease of use, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems. Additionally, the need to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.